Foot Scans Reveal A Lot: Modern Life Takes A Toll On Posture, With Ripple Effects

The new Foot Levelers Kiosk at Simsbury Chiropractic and Wellness.

The new Foot Levelers Kiosk at Simsbury Chiropractic and Wellness.

DAVID HOLAHAN

Feet... and consequences. A new diagnostic foot scanner is quite revealing about the tolls of modern life.

The new device, which looks like a Stairmaster minus the stairs, is right by the reception desk. All patients are urged to step right up and see how flat their feet are, or whether they are listing like a cruise ship hung up on a reef.

Perchance one leg is shorter than the other — the official term is "leg length discrepancy" and it occurs in most people, according to Dr. Cheryl Vincent of Simsbury Chiropractic and Wellness. She also pointed out that 1 in 40 people have scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine.

Patients are told to stand straight, arms at their sides, with their feet on the transparent glass slots: the device creates a 3D scan from the bottom up, measuring pressure points of the feet and assessing overall body bearing. It is not an X-ray and does not involve radiation.

It took 30 seconds for the Foot Levelers Kiosk, introduced in January, to examine and compile a report on this 60-something journalist. The news was not so good: "Your scan shows a SEVERE case of pronation [abnormal foot biomechanics]… with all three arches of the foot collapsed you may experience chronic problems and pain throughout your body … flat feet may cause significant misalignments to other bones and joints."

There was more: a full frontal skeletal image revealed that the right shoulder droops, the pelvis tilts in the opposite direction, and the left knee (operated on long ago) rotates abnormally. The report's concise conclusion was "Orthotics Vital." Foot Levelers also sells custom orthotic inserts for the feet and orthotic footwear that it can develop based on the kiosk scan.

The new Foot Levelers Kiosk at Simsbury Chiropractic and Wellness.

The new Foot Levelers Kiosk at Simsbury Chiropractic and Wellness.

"It is really a great teaching tool for our patients, and for us to evaluate the posture of their feet for any discrepancies, any issues with leg length and posture," said Vincent. "Some people need orthotics, some people just need a little shim. Chiropractically, we're then going to look at the foot, the ankle, the knee, the hip, the sacroiliac, the lumbar spine, all the way up the line to see where the problems may be."

In her 27 years of practice, Vincent has observed the toll that modern life has taken on her patients, whether from lack of proper exercise and diet or as a result of the sedentary habits of office workers and young people.

"Anybody who sits at a desk, who uses a computer, who uses an electronic device to communicate is going to have bad posture," she said. "It can have huge impacts on your spine. There is something called 'forward head posture' that decreases the normal curvature of your cervical spine, making it go the opposite way it is supposed to, That can lead to headaches, neck pain, numbness and tingling, carpal tunnel-like symptoms. I see terrible posture in children."

She added that many of her patients' symptoms are the result of injuries or disorders such as plantar fasciitis, bunions or heel spurs.

Foot Levelers, an international company whose North American headquarters is in Roanoke, Va., touts its new kiosk as "the future of chiropractic technology." An older, slower version, which resembles an overgrown scale, scans one foot at a time.

"The Kiosk was designed with the busy chiropractic office in mind," according to an emailed comment from Kent S. Greenawalt, president and CEO of the firm. "It offers a dynamic educational and diagnostic experience for patients — helping them understand how problems in the feet can lead to problems in the spine and throughout the body — while helping the doctor ensure that every patient gets scanned quickly and easily. It also makes ordering custom orthotics a breeze. We say it's like hiring a new superstar assistant for the office."

Lea Ann Gostyla, who is 63 and a nurse at the UConn Health Center in Farmington, has been a patient of Simsbury Chiropractic for 25 years and experienced the kiosk scanner for the first time in March. "It was very straightforward and it took less time than the older machine," said Gostyla, who ordered new orthotic footwear based on the scan. "I'm sometimes on my feet 10 hours straight at work, and there've been times when I've grabbed a different [non-orthotic] pair of shoes and paid the price."

Gostyla does what Vincent believes more people should do: see a chiropractor regularly for preventive care, not just when she has an injury or is in pain. "Until everybody has a chiropractor, just like everybody has a dentist, we're not where we want to be," Vincent said.

If not viewed like dentistry just yet, the profession clearly is trending upward. The American Chiropractic Association estimates that there will be 80,000 chiropractors in the United States by 2020, up from 58,000 in 2010, an increase of close to 40 percent in a decade.